"When I Was Seven" by Liane Ellison Norman

Liverpool, England during the Blitz.

When I Was Seven

the war in Europe moved in on the domed

wooden radio with its gothic front where 

Let's Pretend arrived every Saturday, brought 

to us by Uncle Bill and Cream O' Wheat. 

Nathalie and I conspired to send a bomb 

to Hitler hidden in a bouquet of wild flowers, 

or better, in a jar of mayonnaise: either bomb 

or mayo would kill him. I built cities 

out of dominoes where Hitler lived 

and bombed them flat with other dominoes, 

but he hid under the couch and I fled onto it

so he couldn't grab me by the ankles.

"When I Was Seven" by Liane Ellison Norman,
from Breathing the West: Great Basin Poems. © Bottom Dog Press, 2012.